We were up again at 6 AM this morning to start our day. I had the usual Weet Bix “Forest Berry” flavored cereal, which is actually pretty good. It’s not as sugary as most cereals in the US are, which is probably a good thing for me! We all had some coffee, and then we began our day.
We first looked at the GPS coordinates for Verity, the lioness. Our plan today was to venture out to where Verity was, among the other 5 lions, and try to dart her again. We headed out, taking two tracking vehicles as usual.
Once we located and were within 50 meters of Verity, the other vehicle waited while our vehicle tried to move closer to her. However, Verity was avoiding us like the plague. We kept going around in circles through thickets of black thorn bushes and large trees, which were really tough on our vehicle. After moving from thicket to thicket, we entered into an open area. There, we ran over a tree stump and heard a “pssssssssssst” noise coming from the back left side of our vehicle. We looked out the window, and saw that the back left tire on our vehicle had deflated and was completely flat. It wasn’t really a problem that we had a flat tire, since we had two spare tires with us. The problem was that we would need to change the tire with 5 lions in the near vicinity. It is also funny how our vehicle made it through all of those thickets of black thorn bushes and trees, but one tree stump in an open area was a problem!
We called the other tracking vehicle over to us via radio. Mark moved into the other vehicle to continue tracking Verity, and four of us stayed back to change the tire. Mine and another tracker’s job was to lookout for lions while two people changed the tire. After about a half hour, the tire was successfully changed and we were ready to drive again. Mark later told us that Verity was right there in the nearby bushes when our tire went flat!
With the tire successfully changed, we drove off to wait underneath a tree in the shade, while Mark’s vehicle continued to track Verity until the sun was setting.
We thought the tracking was over as the sun was setting, but as the sun was setting we received a frantic phone call from Mark’s vehicle, telling us to get to where he was immediately. We could hear them honking their horn over the phone, which was not a good sign. They quickly gave us their GPS coordinates and we rushed off to meet them.
We drove as fast as we could to the GPS coordinates they had given us. They were far away from us, and it took us nearly 10 minutes to get to where they were. When we finally reached their vehicle, everything was a bit frantic, as they had been trying to radio us but the radios were not working properly. They had driven so far away from us that we also hadn’t heard their horn honking. What had happened was that Mark believed he had darted Verity, but Verity was nowhere to be found. We then proceeded to look for the dart and/or Verity. It was getting dark at this point, so we used bright spotlights and the tracking device to drive very carefully in search of Verity, also keeping our eyes peeled for the dart. We drove very slowly as we did NOT want to run Verity over if she was indeed anesthetized! After about 30 minutes of searching with spotlights and the tracking device, we finally located Verity. She was up and walking normally with one of her cubs. She apparently had not been hit with the dart, which was a sigh of relief as well as frustration for us – no harm done, but it was another unsuccessful day.
We drove back to camp in the dark. It was a long and frustrating day again today, especially with the frantic search for Verity and the dart, so the car ride was spent mostly in silence. Once we had returned to camp, we ate a nice dinner and I retired to bed early. We’ll be up early again tomorrow, so I’m off to sleep now. Here’s to hoping tomorrow is a better day!
Veterinary Medicine in Botswana 2013 